There are many recipes for Pad Thai, and it took me some time to perfect this recipe that I taught to my students in my Thai cooking classes. Bear in mind that you need to cook Pad Thai just before you want to serve and eat it, and you’ll want to practice it a few times before you try it out on a gathering of friends.

Method: 

• Prepare the tamarind water. Pull a handful off the block, and place it in a glass bowl (it will be sticky). Boil 500ml (2 cups) of hot water, and pour them over the tamarind and let it soak for 30 minutes. When it is cool enough to put your hands in the water, pretend you are a child again as you mash and squeeze the tamarind and pits like you are playing with playdough! Drain in a sieve squeezing the remaining pits to get all the liquid out. Keep the tamarind water and throw away the pits. You can store the prepared tamarind water in a glass Mason jar. It will keep in the refrigerator for a week.
• Make the sauce: in a mixing bowl, add coconut aminos, soy sauce, coconut palm sugar, making sure that they are well blended together. Set aside with the rest of the ingredients all lined up ready to be stir fried.
• Heat a wok, when it starts to smoke add the coconut or sunflower oil.
• Add the garlic which will flavour the oil, make sure it does not burn. Add the shallots. Gently fry the onions and garlic until golden.
• Prepare the vegan egg replacer whilst cooking the shallots and garlic.
• Add the tofu and/or vegan chicken.
• Push the shallots, garlic and tofu to the side of the wok. Add the vegan egg mixture and quickly scramble with the tofu, garlic, shallots.
• Add the noodles, a handful at a time, stirring quickly. 
• Add the tamarind water, sauce, spring (green) onions, beansprouts  and dried chilli seeds.
• Mix very quickly as you don’t want the noodles to turn sticky and gunky!
• To Serve: Immediately transfer to a flat serving dish. You can style the dish with the ground peanuts, extra dried chilli flakes, and coriander (cilantro) leaves. Arrange the limes around the perimeter of the dish.
• You can also serve separate little dishes of coconut aminos, sugar, dried chilli flakes, extra limes, extra cilantro as they do in Thailand so that each person can adjust the taste of the dish to suit their own taste buds! 

Recipe extracted from Tastes of Love and Light: A Thai Vegan Cookbook by Philippa Kinglsey, philippakingsley.com

Instagram: @philippakingsley